Millions of years ago, the climate was much warmer and wetter than today. But exactly how much warmer and wetter?
Millions of years ago, the climate was much warmer and wetter than today. But exactly how much warmer and wetter?
Our research shows that 26 million years ago, the average winter temperature in the UK and Ireland was more than 18°C, about the same as today’s average summer temperature.
By reading layers of rocks, we can travel back in time. And by studying the fossils they contain, we can reconstruct past climates. So we can reconstruct Earth’s climate in time periods before humans measured the weather and climate. Our recent study investigated the climates of the UK and Ireland from 33 to 20 million years ago.
During this period, carbon dioxide concentrations were like those of today and the next 50 years. Back then, Antarctica had glaciers, but Greenland did not. And as the Greenland ice sheet may collapse within this next century, reading the rocks of this time interval has relevance for what the climate is like without the presence of Greenland ice.
We used 25 locations to reconstruct the climate of this 13-million-year period from around the UK and Ireland by statistically analyzing 82 collections of fossilized pollen from plants that had been frozen in time.
